COVID-19: Japanese Traditions against a New Challenge

Abstract

Over the past decades, the world economy experienced several global crises, but none of them changed our lives as rapidly as COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic is destroying communication and production chains at an incredible speed, forcing states to close their borders and rebuild key public institutions, while educational formats are rapidly switching to distance learning. International research companies have included public opinion responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in their regular monitoring reports. The latest results analyzed by the author (May, 2020) show that this problem certainly causes the greatest concern throughout the world and stands on the top positions of all survey ratings, while Japan turned to be one of the most worried countries. After the lockdown decrees announced by the government in April 2020, Japan, possessing strong corporate culture and decades-long traditions, faced an unexpectedly difficult problem of switching to telework. The same problem faced the Japanese education system - in spite of all efforts, a substantial number of Japanese secondary schools were obviously not even ready for even a partial transition to distance learning, while many parents showed distrust of the new format of teaching. In turn, universities, already having some experience in distance education, have shown greater adaptability to online learning. The problems of higher education were manifested primarily in the inability of foreign students, whom the Japanese government had actively attracted to the country, to continue their education in the normal mode.